Scribbling for broke

Month: May 2016

This was the first thing I fell in love with when I moved here. It’s a smallish stream in the middle of the village, where anyone can go bathing when the weather’s right.

The night we moved into our house was sweltering, so when the sun started to set, we went down here for a swim. It was a calm and quiet night, the odd mosquito danced in the golden evening light, and a slight haze hovered above the water. We swam upstream, past the red boat, and I could have gone on forever.

It was Paradise, and still is. In another month or so, this is where I’ll be.

I’m developing a bit of an obsession with these flowers – probably because A) they’re kind of hard to photograph since they grow just at the shoreline, so ideally, you’d have to wade out into the lake/creek, and B) they make for such a pretty, glowing contrast with the dark brown water.

So for obvious reasons, sunsets attract every amateur photographer on the planet (and a few pros), but I haven’t even remotely come to terms with them. For what I want to do, I need filters and stuff, but let’s put that aside for a minute, because last night was spectacular, and you can’t just let that go, can you?

These pictures don’t really have a subject apart from a couple of trees, since I shot them from my window in the middle of a movie (loo pause). In cases like these, the sky has to be interesting enough on its own.

So what’s the most interesting aspect to bring out of a sunset sky? The ‘end of the world’ mood?

The feathery edges of the darker clouds?

Or the way the rest of the sky dwarfs the actual sunset, making the light look as defeated as it will soon be?

Or the soft pink details in the purple clouds?

I don’t know yet, so perhaps these will just serve as documentation of me early days of stumbling sunset photography.